Sunday, January 28, 2007

LA Times: We're Losing ... Losing ... Losing ...

How's this for coverage of today's decimation of insurgents outside Najaf?

BAGHDAD [Note the dateline: Baghdad, nowhere close to the battle] -- U.S. helicopter crashed in southern Iraq today, killing two soldiers abroad amid reports that the aircraft was struck by ground fire.

The helicopter crashed north of Najaf at about 1:30 p.m., the U.S. military said in a report.

The chopper crash was the third in Iraq since Jan. 20, when a Blackhawk helicopter crashed near Baqouba, killing all 12 soldiers on board.

There, that should take care of most readers: They hear a US copter went down and are remined that others have gone down recently. Having had their fill of bad news, they'll move on to the latest "news" on Brittany and Lindsey or Hillary and Barack, and they'll miss the paragraph that follows:

Two Iraqi officials said that at least 250 gunmen were killed outside of Najaf during an intense battle. Iraqi officials said the gunmen were planning to attack the Shiite holy city of Najaf and assassinate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's top Shiite cleric.

Since the fall of Saddam, MSM have been quick to report everything wrong in Iraq and slow to report any evidence that we are, in fact, winning. In this LAT story, we have the entire history of MSM coverage of Iraq in three short paragraphs.

The report was filed by LAT staff writer Borzou Daragahi. No information is given on Daragahi. Where did he/she come from? Is he/she Shia? A Sunni? An American? We have no idea. We only know that he/she was not at all interested in reporting any success of our war effort.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.